Forcing to download a file using PHP

Question

I have a CSV file on my server  If a user clicks on a link it should download  but instead it opens up in my browser window   My code looks as follows   lt a href  files csv example example csv  gt      Click here to download an example of the  CSV  file  lt  a gt    It s a normal webserver where I have all of my development work on   I tried something like    lt a href  files csv example csv php  gt      Click here to download an example of the  CSV  file  lt  a gt    Now the contents of my csv php file   header  Content-Type  application csv    header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename example csv    header  Pragma  no-cache      Now my issue is it s downloading  but not my CSV file  It creates a new file

User · Answer

To force download you may use Content-Type  application force-download header  which is supported by most browsers   function downloadFile  filePath        header  Content-type  application octet-stream        header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename      basename  filePath              header  Content-Length      filesize  filePath        readfile  filePath       A BETTER WAY  Downloading files this way is not the best idea especially for large files  PHP will require extra CPU   Memory to read and output file contents and when dealing with large files may reach time   memory limits   A better way would be to use PHP to authenticate and grant access to a file  and actual file serving should be delegated to a web server using X-SENDFILE method  requires some web server configuration     X-SENDFILE is natively supported by Lighttpd  https   redmine lighttpd net projects 1 wiki X-LIGHTTPD-send-file Apache requires mod xsendfile module  https   tn123 org mod xsendfile  On Ubuntu may be installed by  apt install libapache2-mod-xsendfile Nginx has a similar X-Accel-Redirect header  https   www nginx com resources wiki start topics examples xsendfile    After configuring web server to handle X-SENDFILE  just replace readfile  filePath  with header  X-SENDFILE       filePath  and web server will take care of file serving  which will require less resources than using PHP readfile    For Nginx use X-Accel-Redirect header instead of X-SENDFILE   Note  If you end up downloading empty files  it means you didn t configure your web server to handle X-SENDFILE header  Check the links above to see how to correctly configure your web server

User · Answer

Configure your server to send the file with the media type application octet-stream

User · Answer

htaccess Solution  To brute force all CSV files on your server to download  add in your  htaccess file   AddType application octet-stream csv   PHP Solution  header  Content-Type  application csv    header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename example csv    header  Pragma  no-cache    readfile   path to yourfile csv

User · Answer

Nice clean solution    lt  php     header  Content-Type  application download        header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename  example csv         header  Content-Length      filesize  example csv           fp   fopen  example csv    r        fpassthru  fp       fclose  fp     gt

User · Answer

Or you can do this using HTML5  Simply with    lt a href  example csv  download gt download not open it lt  a gt

User · Answer

This means that your browser can handle this file type   If you don t like it  the easiest method would be offering ZIP files  Everyone can handle ZIP files  and they are downloadable by default

User · Answer

If you are doing it with your application itself    I hope this code helps   HTML  In href -- you have to add download file php along with your URL    lt a class  download  href    download file php fileSource   http   www google com logo small png  target   blank  title  YourTitle  gt    PHP     Here is the Download php file to force download stuff      lt  php      fullPath     GET  fileSource        if  fullPath             fsize   filesize  fullPath            path parts   pathinfo  fullPath            ext   strtolower  path parts  extension              switch   ext                case  pdf                   header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename        path parts  basename             Use  attachment  to force a download                 header  Content-type  application pdf       Add here more headers for diff  extensions                 break               default                  header  Content-type  application octet-stream                    header  Content-Disposition  filename        path parts  basename                             if  fsize       Checking if file size exist             header  Content-length   fsize                      readfile  fullPath           exit          gt

User · Answer

A previous answer on this page describes how to use  htaccess to force all files of a certain type to download  However  the solution does not work with all file types across all browsers  This is a more reliable way    lt FilesMatch      i csv    gt    ForceType application octet-stream   Header set Content-Disposition attachment  lt  FilesMatch gt    You might need to flush your browser cache to see this working correctly

User · Answer

Here is a more browser-safe solution        fp    fopen  yourfile   rb         if  strstr   SERVER  HTTP USER AGENT     MSIE          header  Content-Type   application octet-stream         header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename  yourname file         header  Expires  0        header  Cache-Control  must-revalidate  post-check 0  pre-check 0        header  Content-Transfer-Encoding  binary        header  Pragma  public        header  Content-Length    filesize  yourfile      else       header  Content-Type   application octet-stream         header  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename  yourname file         header  Content-Transfer-Encoding  binary        header  Expires  0        header  Pragma  no-cache        header  Content-Length    filesize  yourfile       fpassthru  fp   fclose  fp

User · Answer

This cannot be done reliably  since it s up to the browser to decide what to do with an URL it s been asked to retrieve   You can suggest to the browser that it should offer to  save to disk  right away by sending a Content-disposition header   header  Content-disposition  attachment      I m not sure how well this is supported by various browsers  The alternative is to send a Content-type of application octet-stream  but that is a hack  you re basically telling the browser  I m not telling you what kind of file this is  and depending on the fact that most browsers will then offer a download dialog  and allegedly causes problems with Internet Explorer   Read more about this in the Web Authoring FAQ   Edit You ve already switched to a PHP file to deliver the data - which is necessary to set the Content-disposition header  unless there are some arcane Apache settings that can also do this   Now all that s left to do is for that PHP file to read the contents of the CSV file and print them - the filename example csv in the header only suggests to the client browser what name to use for the file  it does not actually fetch the data from the file on the server

[php] Forcing to download a file using PHP

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